Noble Neighbors invites residents to Light Up Noble!

Noble area residents, businesses and institutions will be lighting up the neighborhood this holiday season. Light Up Noble! is the newest Noble Neighbors initiative to showcase the neighborhoods along Noble Road.

Thousands of visitors come to the neighborhood each year to view the holiday lighting display that GE Lighting designs and installs at its Nela Park campus in East Cleveland, just north of the Cleveland Heights city line. This year will be the 92nd year that the company will create the display. It will be the first year that Noble Neighbors seeks to expand the holiday lighting spirit to the rest of the neighborhood.

“This year, Noble Road from Monticello Boulevard to Euclid Avenue will become a glowing, welcoming corridor, twinkling with community pride,” said Susan Sanders, one of the leaders of Noble Neighbors.

The lights will reflect the area’s diversity—featuring holiday-themed decorations, solstice observance illuminations, and displays showing pride in Cleveland sports teams. The common goal is for neighbors to join together to display neighborhood pride to all who visit the famed Nela Park lighting display.

“We are thrilled to learn how many people want to join in this effort. There is such a growing sense of community pride along Noble Road,” said Sanders.

Noble Neighbors envisions Light Up Noble! as a way to welcome visitors to the neighborhood and encourage them to take part in the area’s renaissance. “Longtime Noble residents are looking for terrific new residents and business owners who will join in and help continue to shape the Noble quadrant of Cleveland Heights into the sustainable, livable, affordable and enjoyable district for which it is distinct,” said Sanders.

The neighborhood has added five newly created, volunteer-supported public perennial gardens and is also home to Oxford Community Garden, Woodview Hope Garden, Montford Community Garden, and the Noble Neighborhood Library Children’s Garden. Housing options include bungalows, mid-century ranches, arts-and-crafts-era three-story homes, colonials and apartments. “This vibrant area is perfect for raising a family, owning pets and growing old in its single-floor lifestyle houses,” said Sanders.

Noble Neighbors invites all Heights residents and visitors to bask in the glow of Light Up Noble!

GE Lighting President and CEO Bill Lacey will lead a special ceremony for employees and their families at which the company will flip the switch to officially light up this year’s Nela Park holiday display on Friday, Dec. 2, at 5:30 p.m.

The theme for this year's display is “Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall . . . Holiday time is the best of all!” The lights will remain on throughout the holiday season, until Jan. 3, 2017.

Nela Park has functioned as the company’s headquarters since 1911, when the National Electric Lamp Association (NELA) became General Electric. The 92-acre campus was the first industrial park in the world and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

Nela Park’s holiday lighting display is world-famous and features a miniature version of the National Christmas Tree in Washington, D.C., which has been designed by GE Lighting for the last 54 years.